My son turns ten years old today.  Ten.  A full decade, two whole hands, double digits.

How does this happen?  I think that time speeds up exponentially when you become a parent; that’s the only logical explanation as to why the last ten years have flown by so much more quickly than the ten before them.  Each stage of parenthood has been an adjustment, but a very gradual one, full of such small daily changes that they aren’t even noticed until you look back and realize they’ve occurred.  He still needs me, yes, but he needs me far differently than he did then.

I wrote a post when he turned five, and now five is a distant memory and we are on the road to the tweens.  I read over my original words again yesterday, and I cried at this part:

You are one half of my greatest accomplishment, my biggest treasure, my deepest emotion.  My everyday-moment-joy doubles when you smile and raises tenfold when you laugh.  I hurt when you hurt, and when you cry on the outside I cry on the inside.  Before we had you, I wasn’t even sure I wanted children, or had a maternal instinct inside of me.  You changed that, my love.  You showed me a side of myself that I didn’t know even existed, and a side of myself that now seems so intuitive, so fateful, so clear, so this-is-what-I-was-meant-to-do obvious.  

My biggest treasure, my deepest emotion.  All still true.

Happy birthday my sweet boy.